Thursday, January 25, 2007

Do you realize that the last bit of actual NFL programming I watched was the moment after Peyton Manning kneeled down to seal the game against the Pats? I've managed to avoid it all. Of course this means I haven't been able to see SportsCenter, but thanks to the interweb I've been able to keep up with the goings on with all of my teams (let's not discuss Michigan's performance in Madison last night shall we?) In my effort to find ways to fill this gap in my sports viewing I've tried many options, but today I may have found the best one. What better way to fill the football void than with...football.

Now as I've said before the Senior Bowl has been doing a great job of filling some of the football watching void. Listening to some draft analysis is good for my soul, but there is still a little bit of me that misses the NFL a little bit. Not enough to make me want to flip on NFL Live, mostly because I may run into Merrill Hoge, but enough to feel a small void. Today I found the answer to that void....NFL FILMS BABY!

ESPN is currently running NFL Films Super Bowl highlight films during the day and these are easily the best thing on TV right now. Every highlight film is set up by Steve Sabol, who runs NFL films, and he always does a decent job giving a brief description of the storylines of that particular season before setting up the title of the highlight film. They are always something corny like "Gold Rush" for one of the 49ers wins but I think that adds to the charm a bit. When I was a kid ESPN would run these all Super Bowl Sunday before the game and I would just watch that all day instead of the six (can you actually believe they spend this much time on ONE FREAKING GAME!) hours of pre-game coverage.

Nothing can really duplicate the NFL Films music and John Facenda's voice over the highlights. Just great stuff. Today I caught a bit of the 49ers beat down of the Chargers. Watching that really reminded me how brutal of a beating that really was. Steve Young threw six (!) TD passes in that game. I guess the best analogy I could come up with is that the 49ers were Kobe and the Chargers were...nevermind...

That being said this was a welcome diversion in my day and I would totally recommend watching as many of these as you can. What better way to get ready for the Super Bowl than by watching all the greatness of the past ones? Okay...maybe skip the Ravens/Giants one...but even that game would be better than watching Salisbury and Hoge obsess over whether Peyton was able to thumb wrestle with Eli this week...this bye week is just freaking brutal...ugh. A little over a week to go!